Edwards, North Carolina's senior senator and the Democratic nominee for vice president, cast his last vote June 24, against the confirmation of a federal appeals court judge from Wisconsin. He has missed more than three dozen votes since then while campaigning.

He was not in Washington last month to vote on a bill that will extend tax cuts for the middle class. Edwards, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also missed a vote confirming Porter J. Goss as director of central intelligence.

Next week, while Edwards is in Cleveland for a debate with Vice President Dick Cheney, the Senate is expected to debate and vote on the Sept. 11 commission's suggestions for reorganizing the nation's intelligence operations.

In comparison, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, Edwards' Republican counterpart, has missed four votes since June. And her office is working on more than twice as many cases to help Tar Heel constituents as Edwards' office.

Edwards' latest absence follows more than a year when he was away for long stretches while he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. As a senator, Edwards makes $158,100 a year.

It's not unusual for senators seeking higher office to skip sessions. In 2000, Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut missed more than 60 votes between the time Al Gore chose him as his running mate and Election Day.

The resignation of Republican Bob Dole of Kansas, who left the Senate as majority leader to run for president in 1996, was not typical.

"The issue in 1996 was, Dole wanted to break association with his being a congressional insider," said Bruce Miroff, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Albany. "In order to have the ID he wanted to have to run against [Bill] Clinton, he had to terminate that official role."

Senators more often keep their jobs while running for higher office, as John F. Kennedy and Warren G. Harding did when they ran for president, and as Harry Truman and Al Gore did when they ran for vice president.

"There is not one expected or honorable course," Miroff said.

Mike Briggs, a spokesman for Edwards, said the senator's staff talks to Edwards by phone as often as they need to, and he says the staff is still solving problems North Carolinians have with federal bureaucracies.

"This whole experience of the last year or so has turned me into a big fan of cloning," Briggs said. "I wish we had two of him. But he's tending to business while he's been out on the campaign trail."

Edwards has 15 staffers working on constituent services -- eight of those full time. But in August, Dole's office was working on about 4,000 constituent requests for help, while Edwards' office was working on 1,800, said spokesmen for each office.

Briggs questioned whether the offices were counting their cases the same way. "There's no technical definition of this stuff," he said.

Nevertheless, some people with interests in federal action say Edwards' absence from the Capitol puts North Carolina at a disadvantage.

Hugh Overholt, a New Bern lawyer, goes to Washington twice a month as part of a team working to keep Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station off the list of bases the Pentagon will close.

Overholt, who contributed to Edwards' Republican opponent, Lauch Faircloth, six years ago, said he has never met Edwards despite his request for a meeting to talk about military bases. And although Edwards' staff is very polite on the phone, Overholt said, he hasn't met with anyone from his office in at least two years.

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